I suspect you are more familiar with the C.15th material of which I know
effectively nothing other than that it exists!
I shall have to look through my reams of notes on the early C.16th
Corporation of London records for other refs to the laws of God. As to the
case in question my feeling is that cases such as this one are really very
rare there. This may be why Marjorie McIntosh doesn't discuss them.
If they'd been common I'd have noted more, as when one
is going through the mundane day to day business of the municipal courts
anything with a bit of colour stands out. (I suspect this was true also for
those sitting in the courts).
The piece I quoted came from a 16th century volume, probably a Letter Book
given the direct reference to the book of Dunthorn, but I transcribed
straight it from my
notes so I'll have to re-visit them. I never really thought about my notes
as being an archive in their own right. Date-wise it won't be before 1500
or after 1565.
Regards
John A.W. Lock
----- Original Message -----
From: Shannon McSheffrey <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2000 8:54 PM
Subject: RE: Joan of Arc & the news from the Stews
> Another note regarding the cross-dressing adulterous woman transgressing
the
> laws of God: in the second half of the 15th century (and through the 16th
> century) it became fairly common for local secular courts to pursue
> prostitution, adultery, and fornication, as offences against "good order".
> Marjorie McIntosh's recent book, CUP 1998, the title of which escapes me
for
> some reason (something like Regulating Misbehaviour?) talks about this in
> detail, although she doesn't discuss London. In most jurisdictions in
> England, the secular courts did not cite "religious" reasons for their
> pursuit of this misbehaviour, but in London, it was quite common, from the
> early 15th century, for the civic officials to call such acts "contrary to
> the laws of God". I have a short piece, in a forum on McIntosh's book,
that
> discusses this ("Jurors, Respectable Masculinity, and Christian Morality,"
> Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 269-278). Hope this is helpful.
>
> Where does the passage you quoted come from?
>
> Shannon McSheffrey
> Department of History, LB-601
> Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
> Montreal, Quebec CANADA H3G 1M8
> [log in to unmask]
> http://alcor.concordia.ca/~shannon
>
>
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